Oftentimes, an email user sends out an email, for example, to ask a question or ask for help solving a problem. However, as is often the case, the email sender user may send out an additional email, as a follow-on to the original email, in which the sender tells the recipient to ignore the original email. This may be, for example, because the sender has already found the answer, in the meantime, and no longer needs the recipient to reply with the answer to the question. Unfortunately, the recipient of the original email may still end up spending considerable time and effort in researching and finding an answer to the question because the recipient is unaware that the problem has been resolved. This unnecessary work can be costly in time, productivity, and money, because an employee may waste time solving a problem that is already solved.
Currently, the only existing solution to this problem is the recall function found in email clients, such as Lotus Notes. Under the current solution, after sending the original email, the sender may attempt to recall the email using the recall function. However, this solution merely attempts to delete the email received in the recipient's email client without any notification as to why it was deleted. In order to explain why the email was recalled, an additional email would be sent containing an explanation. Currently, recalling an email doesn't notify the recipient that the content of the original email may no longer be relevant, or that the email contained erroneous information in the email body or in the attachments. Currently, when one of the above situations occurs, the sender of the original email may send another email in addition to the recall request in order to convey one or more of the messages above.
Sending additional email tends to clutter and fill up the inbox in the recipient's email client. Many email users come back to hundreds of emails after a business trip or vacation. Many times, the recipient starts from the oldest email and reviews the emails in the inbox from oldest to newest. Sometimes a question has already been solved, and the sender of the email makes it known at a later time, perhaps a later day, that the question is resolved. This may result in the recipient wasting time and energy researching a problem that has already been resolved, simply because the later notification is residing further up the email inbox queue. Sending additional emails to provide correct information, attach a different attachment, or instruct the recipient to ignore a previous email adds to the clutter of an email client inbox. Additionally, the recipient may be in the middle of a reply or forward of the received email and not see the later email in time to prevent replying to or forwarding on erroneous information from the original email, replying to irrelevant information, or wasting time answering a question that has been resolved. Thus, the current solution to recall an email provides a limited functionality because it does not address many possible scenarios.